Farewell to a grand old ship
A crowd of around 1,000 people gathered on an Irvine slip on Friday 20th September to watch the world’s oldest clipper ship leave Scotland for the last time.
The City of Adelaide, built in 1864, had a long and busy life, sailing to Australia and then used as a hospital ship and renamed HMS Carrick. but since 1992 her elegant hull – all that remained after she sank in the Clyde the previous year – has been mouldering in Irvine while international interests debated what to do with her. The winning bid came, suitably, from a consortium in Adelaide, the city of her name, and a pontoon barge was constructed to convey her to a big cargo ship waiting in the Thames estuary.
The trip had been planned to start a week earlier, but was delayed because of the bad weather on the west coast of Scotland. For those who turned up, it was worth waiting for. The watchers saw the old hull, still beautiful, carefully settled on the pontoon and towed out in to the Irish Sea. From there, it will travel round the tip of Cornwall and along England’s south coast to the River Thames, where the frail old hull will be loaded into the cargo ship for the voyage to Australia.
The City of Adelaide’s history will go with her. For decades, she carried emigrants to Australia, then in 1924 began a second career as a hospital ship. She was then converted into a training ship, but after a disastrous fire, she sank at Princess Dock in Glasgow and lay on the bottom of the River Clyde for a year before being raised and taken to Irvine. With repairs likely to cost more than £10m, there was a long stalemate about her future – but now she is at last on her way to the final stage of her long life. She will be restored and made available to a new generation of people to see her and walk over her, and admire the lovely design and fitness for purpose that made her useful for decades. Truly a happy ending.
John Kinsman’s picture shows The City of Adelaide on the pontoon, about to leave Irvine on the first stage of her long journey to Australia.
